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Archive for July, 2017

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), a nonprofit organization that supports the manufacturing industry, and Stratasys Ltd. announced the winners of a student additive manufacturing competition held during the 53rd annual SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference.

The SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition is a student contest co-sponsored by the organizations to attract the future workforce to this growing field and allow contestants to get hands-on experience using the latest 3D printing software and technology, such as the new Stratasys F123 Series. The competition was held at the 53rd annual SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference, and six teams took home gold, silver and bronze medals for fulfilling all of the contest requirements.

Now in its third year, the 2017 Additive Manufacturing Competition consisted of 34 high school and post-secondary student teams competing for a chance to take home gold, silver, or bronze medals – as well as scholarships from the SME Education Foundation, and a MakerBot Mini printer. The Additive Manufacturing Competition was created to stimulate student learning of additive manufacturing and 3D printing techniques.

“Each year, we attract more students to participate in the SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the growth,” said Jeff Krause, executive director and CEO of SME. “This is an exciting time for additive manufacturing and 3D printing and we are proud to be at the forefront of its evolution and making sure our future manufacturing leaders will be prepared for what lies ahead as the industry progresses.”

The 2017 Additive Manufacturing Competition involved designing and printing a track piece (fixture) capable of moving a marble to a designated location after the ball rolls down a ramp. The fixture was required to connect with the ramp at specific points and remain stable for the test’s duration. Each team was provided time to design the fixture, build the 3D printed prototype on a Stratasys 3D printer, and make any necessary design modifications the next day. (more…)

These are the dog days of summer, the hottest part of the season in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s also one of the slowest times of the year for noteworthy “hot” news; MCAD included, politics excluded.

However, this week marked a very noteworthy bit of news: Desktop Metal announced it has completed a $115 million Series D investment round to further accelerate the company’s rapid business growth and adoption of its end-to-end metal 3D printing systems. Since its inception in October 2015, Desktop Metal has raised a total of $212 million in financing, with the Series D marking the largest individual private round for a metal additive manufacturing company.

With the Studio System, engineers can print complex, functional parts in a variety of materials, including copper. With its high electrical and thermal conductivity, copper is an ideal material for heat exchanger applications, like this copper heat sink for an LED light bulb. (Photo: Desktop Metal)

According to Ric Fulop, CEO and co-founder of Desktop Metal, the funding will help fuel the company’s speed to market, expand its sales programs, as well as progress the development of advanced R&D. The company is also exploring international expansion as early as 2018.

ANSYS, known for its engineering simulation software, announced this week that it has acquired Computational Engineering International Inc. (CEI), the developer of a suite of products for analyzing, visualizing, and communicating simulation data. Terms of the deal, which closed earlier this month, were not disclosed.

The merger of the physical and digital worlds is resulting in products that with an overwhelming number of design decisions compared to previous product generations. That is something only engineering simulation can feasibly provide in a timely and cost-effective fashion. Users need to quickly analyze the huge amount of data that simulation generates to make the best engineering and business decisions.

Headquartered in Apex, North Carolina, CEI has 28 employees and more than 750 customers around the world. Its flagship product, EnSight, is used for analyzing, visualizing, and communicating simulation data in terms that mere mortals can comprehend.

“CEI has a long track record of success thanks to fantastic technology built by a world-class team,” said Mark Hindsbo, ANSYS vice president and general manager. “By bringing CEI’s leading visualization tools into the ANSYS portfolio, customers will be able to make better engineering and business decisions, leading to even more amazing products in the future.”(more…)

An impossible object is a type of optical illusion. It consists of a two-dimensional figure that is instantly and subconsciously interpreted by the visual system as representing a projection of a three-dimensional object.

In most cases the impossibility becomes apparent after viewing the figure for a few seconds. However, the initial impression of a 3D object remains even after it has been contradicted. There are also more subtle examples of impossible objects where the impossibility does not become apparent spontaneously and it is necessary to consciously examine the geometry of the implied object to determine that it is impossible.

The unsettling nature of impossible objects occurs because of our natural tendency to interpret 2D drawings as 3D objects. With an impossible object, looking at different parts of the object makes one reassess the 3D nature of the object, which confuses the mind.

Although possible to represent in two dimensions, it is not geometrically possible for such an object to exist in the physical world. However, some models of impossible objects have been constructed, such that when they are viewed from a very specific point, the illusion is maintained. Rotating the object or changing the viewpoint breaks the illusion, and therefore many of these models rely on forced perspective or having parts of the model appearing to be further or closer than they actually are.

Below is the Penrose triangle (an impossible object) that was first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. The mathematician Roger Penrose independently devised and popularized it in the 1950s, describing it as “impossibility in its purest form.”

A 3D-printed version of the Reutersvärd Triangle illusion, its appearance created by a forced perspective.